Category: Culture

For SFCrowsnest, late autumn is the more intense time for recruitment. We want people all the year around but this time of the year with the darker nights, you might well be wondering what to do with spare time reading. The two could meet. We supply the books. You review them and get more books. […]

The difficulty with this sort of book for the fan/reviewer is how to describe it without summarising it. While reading I jotted down interesting facts and ended up with seventeen pages of notes which, if I put them down here, would spoil the book for you. The names in the title are familiar to any […]

Much of Jeffrey A. Brown’s book, ‘Beyond Bombshells’ focuses on the growth of women as lead heroines in a film, TV and comicbook market dominated by male characters and whether they are getting a fair deal. The discussion in the opening chapter and women and torture draws some comparison to how men go through the […]

‘First Man’ is a film that speculates on and tries to recreate the experience of being Neil Armstrong, going from his early flying days to his terrestrial flying days to his flight to the Moon where he became the first human being to step out onto our satellite. Then there is the trip home and […]

I have to confess to not knowing who Rian Hughes is but looking at the people praising him prior to the introduction then I must have seen his work as indeed you have. After this book, you’re not likely to forget him. I thought more about my opening line after reading this book and figured […]

Hello everyone I blame ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ for bringing dystrophic Science Fiction back into vogue, although really, it hasn’t gone away, just not so extreme and not so close to our current time that it can make people uncomfortable. After all, George Orwell’s ‘1984’ is one of the rare SF books on school curriculums and […]

We were informed by SFcrowsnest contributor and writer Sven Scheurer’s widow, Heidi, that he died unexpectedly on 9th September 2018. He had told me he’d been ill recently but was getting back into the swing of reviews. Some of our chats often centred on the contrast on living in Germany where he was born and […]

This is a documentary about nutrias. These are the world’s largest rodents, weighing in the range of 20 pounds or more. They began invading southern Louisiana swamps about 1958. They have driven out aquatic wildlife in that area. The issue of what to be done about them is controversial. Animal protection and fashion sources benefit […]

‘Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus In A World Of Lost Attention’ by Maggie Jackson is an update of her 2008 book. Her contention is people are doing far too much on-line through various devices and not paying attention to the real world with a variety of examples is something we should all be familiar with. I […]

Hello everyone When I was young, I often wore something that would give away my interest in comics, whether it was a painted Phoenix design on the back of my white windcheater or the odd badge. These days I’m quite sedate in my choice of clothes whereas now it would less likely to […]